Google Brain – Externalization of Thought

TimeWatch Editorial
November 2, 2015

If you are not aware of the automatic surveillance that pervades society today, you are perhaps dwelling on another planet. The collection of information is so routine that we have come to accept it as “the cost of doing business.” Open up a discussion on the subject of “The loss of Privacy” and the response you might get may be a yawn or perhaps some absent mind texting. Society has accepted the fact that they are no longer able to have a conversation, buy a product, or for that matter, walk along the street, without being monitored.

Not only is there a continuing record of just about everything that you do, but there is visible record of every location that exists. We are not now speaking of drawings on a map, but literal rotatable pictures of the location. Google Earth has been working on and continues to update the ability to deliver real-time images of any place on earth. To truly understand the enormity of this invasion, you must first grasp the fact that this technology will soon be as pervasive as an “app” on your cell-phone. I am sure you know that you can already track the location of your child anywhere he or she might be using already available and downloadable “apps” on your phone.

What might be a surprise, however, is the use of technology, not just to track your activity, but to actually guide your decision making. Not just the simple act of placing a particular product on your cell phone or your computer screen so that the possibility of your responding with a purchase is increased, but to control and plant any or all information so that your choices are completely managed.

Robert McMillan wrote an article, published on the “Wired” website on July 16, 2014 entitled: Inside the Artificial Brain That’s remaking the Google Empire. Robert McMillan covers the complex technologies that run behind the scenes on your mobile apps. Here’s what he says about a project known as Google Brain:

“Google Brain—an internal codename, not anything official—started back in 2011, when Stanford’s Andrew Ng joined Google X, the company’s “moonshot” laboratory group, to experiment with deep learning. About a year later, Google had reduced Android’s voice recognition error rate by an astounding 25 percent. Soon the company began snatching up every deep learning expert it could find. Last year, Google hired Geoff Hinton, one of the world’s foremost deep-learning experts. And then in January, the company shelled out $400 million for DeepMind, a secretive deep learning company.”

What is deep learning? Their website defines it for us:

Deep Learning is a new area of Machine Learning research, which has been introduced with the objective of moving Machine Learning closer to one of its original goals: Artificial Intelligence.

Robert McMillan from “Wired” continues”

With deep learning, computer scientists build software models that simulate—to a certain extent—the learning model of the human brain. These models can then be trained on a mountain of new data, tweaked and eventually applied to brand new types of jobs.

All this may sound rather wonderful, if you are fascinated with the brave new world. However, listen to what the study Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips says.

“The access to data anytime, anywhere, through search engines like Google, is taking an effect on human memory, according to a new study, ultimately altering the way the brain functions.

With so much information available, there is less need to remember everything, especially with tools like Google allowing us find what we need quickly. The result -- the Internet becomes an external memory for humans.”

If Google is indeed your external memory, then it follows that your information is being managed, externally.

So, we are now beyond the collection and storage of information. Rather we are in an era of computerized collection, storage, automatic analysis, filtering and decision making. Rational decisions are dependent upon access to all available sources of influence. Choices are best made when the probable choices are seen. When information is filtered, based upon a computerized analysis of what you should, or should not be seeing, rather than all that is available, your possible choices have been pre-determined.

Cameron A. Bowen